Charity Insights

After 4 weeks at the Thomas Fredrick Willetts Foundation, my internship has come to an end. My final week has been packed full of liaising, research and finalising the projects we’ve been working towards.

So why did I decide to take up a charity insights internship?

I wanted to gain valuable experience in a professional, office environment as well as utilise my skills and knowledge to benefit others. If the insights scheme was not available, then I would have been waitressing tables all summer, which is still valuable work experience but I have been doing this ongoing for two years, having the chance to add something different through the insights scheme is extremely invaluable.

What have I gained from this internship?

I have learned to prioritise tasks set upon me, even at the last minute, and how to handle myself in a professional situation to express my ideas in a coherent way. Also, my researching skills have greatly increased as I have done extensive analysis of why particular social media campaigns have been successful, how to approach the arts philanthropists, and how to manage several social media platforms at once. As well as pick up a few tips from my co-intern Theo when it comes to all things technological.

How has this shaped my future career path?

Personally, being in an office all day every day was very tiring, the days when we went out and filmed the videos and meet new people were definitely the most interesting. I would therefore say that having a job in which I went out and met people or had a balance between being in the office and being out of it would be ideal; as I am sure most people would agree.

Finally, I would like to thank Imperial Insights for supporting me through this internship and providing me with such an invaluable opportunity. I would recommend the scheme to anyone who wants to make a difference with their summer and meet different people.

Thank you

P.S. Here is the last video we made with one of the musicians the charity supports, Giulio Romano, to get his perspective on the charity to help raise awareness of what they do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4nwBh9oePw&feature=youtu.be

Read Week 4 – Final week at TF Willetts Foundation in full

So week three is at an end and we’ve finally finished editing the video which starts the campaign, to check it out go to:

http://youtu.be/TsyC3swvDZY

The Facebook and Twitter pages are also now active with content we’ve scheduled to go up and hopefully we’ve started drawing attention to the charity – our whole aim!

This week’s tasks, alongside the social media content and video launch, were to film a second video and organise proceedings for two further events later in the year. This second video focused on an Italian guitarist who specialises in gypsy guitar, Giulio Romano, and is someone whose events the charity supports. The aim of this video is to showcase his work and receive Giulio’s personal feedback on what he thinks of the charity. To get this filming we went to one of his gigs Wednesday night after working in the office and got to experience his music for ourselves, not only did we hear Giulio and his friend perform gypsy folk songs on guitars but we also had a live painting being created of them as they played. All of which we have included in the video which is currently in the process of editing before we can publish.

In addition to this, there has been a large number of liaison emails and research to help get together the ‘interview series’ with celebrities for September and a choral flash mob in December at Paddington station as well as pulling a list of choir contacts together for the ‘choir of light’ project later in the year.

The plan for my final week is to set up a sustainable schedule for content to keep the pages active even after my internship is over and to gather as much information to provide TF Willetts with the basis on which to build their future projects.

Read Week 3 – Promotion of the TF Willetts Social Media Campaign in full

After my first week of extensive research and planning, we’ve now developed the campaign in the second week starting with our slogan ‘life in the light’ (it was originally ‘light up a life’ but sadly this was already taken for a hospice campaign) and filming a video in Hyde Park. The aim of the video is to introduce me and my colleague Theo, talk about what we’re going to be doing on the Facebook pages in the next couple of weeks, what the charity itself does and how people can get involved with our campaign. We weren’t aware we we’re doing this until Tuesday when the CEO of the company, Brian Willetts, told us he wanted us to do a video by Thursday, consequently we had to work at an extremely fast pace and in our own time to create content to deliver. This was definitely testing on my time management and creativity skills, but I’ve had an extremely valuable day of filming. We organised filming time with an experienced camera man who has worked for paramount studios, Sam Parsons, to film our campaign; he has kindly offered to edit it for us by Monday to post on the T F Willetts Facebook page to start the campaign next week.

Since Friday I have expanded my role within the charity, not only am I social media campaign officer but I have also taken on a more personal assistant role too. This has involved aiding the organisation of ‘The Light Project’ day event in October. I have compiled a list of celebrities Brian knows, in order to contact them and request to film videos in which they talk about why the arts are important to them. The idea is to post these videos each week in a build up to the ‘The Light Project’ event in October. In addition we’ve looked at a potential venue for this event and investigated companies to host a wifi donating segment. To further this, Theo and I have completed a thorough analysis of the website and are currently discussing updates with the web designer to create a clearer and easier to navigate web page. My attention has also been directed towards setting up a PayPal account for the charity which links to their website and then conducting an international transaction over email into the account.

Tomorrow we give our weekly presentation and plan out our aims for next week.

Read Week 2: Content and development of TF Willetts social media campaign in full

Regeneration of communities through performing arts is at the heart of the Thomas Frederick Willetts Foundation. Their current aim is to launch ‘The Light Project’ in October, a project which focuses on building an arts centre in Treharris, a disadvantaged community, to bring revenue back into the community as well as a providing a place where the community can come together to carry out performing arts projects. To sustain this they are opening ice cream cafes, art exhibitons from the Tate Britain and even manufacturing their own regional beer the ‘Taf-Valley’. The regeneration of Treharris will hopefully act as a microcosm to apply to other disadvantaged communities in the UK and across the world.

This is the part where my internship begins; we want to create a social media campaign which builds up to this launch day, bringing forward the idea of passing on the tools for regenerating communities using performing arts. As this is the first week, the concept is still in its early developments, but an initial idea is ‘passing on the light’ or ‘passing on the lantern’ using a physical tag which can be passed throughout social media. Obviously trying to get something to go viral is a mean feat, and is the core of any marketing campaign, but we can try!

With regards to the internship itself, I have moved well and truly out of my comfort zone. First of all, my team consists of me and one other intern Theo, neither of us has extensive prior knowledge in social media campaigns nor knows the charity in depth. And secondly, we have been left with the open ended project of ‘a social media campaign which builds up to a day and encompasses The Light Project’. This does provide us with a wide scope for creativity and leaves us to explore whichever avenue we wish the direction of the campaign to go, but does make narrowing down what we want to do a challenge. Therefore research was our key aim this week; I compiled a portfolio of successful social media campaigns, such as the #nomakeupselfie and movember, highlighting why they were successful, what they perhaps could have done to improve, and what we can draw from them to apply to our own campaign. Further research was required on the charity itself to help us establish what they’ve done, what they’re going to do and what specific values they want us to portray in the campaign.

Finally, today was the compilation of all the research into a power point presentation which Theo and I pitched to the CEO of the charity along with the brief aims of the campaign as a whole and our action plan for next week.

I am looking forward executing our action plan for next week and hopefully bringing the light project social media campaign to fruition.

Read Week one – Getting started in full